What really makes for good schools? At a recent conference organized for North Carolina Editorial Writers, organizer Ferrel Guillory, director of UNC's Program on Public Life, presented this question for discussion.

To help, he brought several top education experts, including J.B. Buxton, the former deputy school superintendent in charge of day-to-day operations at the Department of Public Instruction; Judith Rizzo, executive director of the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy; and Bill McDiarmid, dean of UNC's School of Education.

Their discussion of the enormous challenges facing North Carolina schools took me back to the times when I monitored the education committees in the state legislature. My job was to look out for the 16-campus UNC System, but the education committees also had responsibility for public schools.

Thinking back, I remembered that various people at different times had many different answers to the "What makes for good schools?" question.

For instance, the committees often heard that smaller class size was the single most important thing that could be done to improve schools.

On another day, the key would be technology: computers were the missing link to good results.

Without better accountability, including regular student testing and teacher performance evaluation, others said that there could be no pathway to progress.

Always, the advocates for education emphasized the importance of increased funding.

The experts that Guillory assembled also emphasized the leadership role as one of the keys. But they cautioned that no one thing by itself is going to be a magic fix. Only sustained efforts across many areas can bring about meaningful progress.

At the end of the discussion, J.B. Buxton brought up an example of one of the tough problems the state schools face: "We cannot recruit enough science teachers to give adequate classroom instruction to the students in many northeastern North Carolina schools. So we are going to have to serve them with virtual instruction over the Internet."

That report reminded me how important the classroom teachers at North Mecklenburg High School had been to my educational development. Their caring, hands-on approach to teaching overcame our lack of some of the "critical" resources I later heard about in the legislature.

But then I remembered that one of the best classes I ever had was not unlike the virtual classes planned for some northeastern schools. A young teacher named Joe Foster taught my physics class. It might have been tough for him to teach it alone. But thanks to funding by the Ford Foundation, he got the help of a set of excellent filmed 30-minute lectures and demonstrations by Dr. Harvey White, a University of California professor.

Highly organized and articulate, White made complicated physics understandable. Then, Mr. Foster, freed from the rigors of preparing a daily lecture, gave full attention to hands-on help and follow-up discussion.

Back then, I thought this effective method of teaching, with an on-site teacher and off-site lecturer, would be the wave of the future.

It wasn't. And it might not be a magic answer for northeastern North Carolina. But I am glad it is going to get another try.

D.G. Martin will talk about this column on WCHL-1360 at 8:20 a.m. with Ron Stutts. His regular program, "Who's Talking," airs at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.